St. Patrick is reputed to have driven the snakes out of Ireland. If you want to observe St. Patrick’s Day today while also clutter-busting, all you need to do is pretend that St. Patrick drove the clutter out of Ireland. Then you can follow his example in your own home as a way of observing his holiday.

March 05, 2018

Electricity has been out here since a storm on Friday, and the outage is expected to last at least one more day. The loss of power delays the launch of the channel cards for this year’s March of Trash, but it gives me a chance to focus on freezers. In an extended power outage, almost everyone can expect a problem in the freezer.

March 03, 2018

The 2018 March of Trash challenge scorecard invites you to get rid of 28 items during the month of March, with the items grouped into seven channels, or ways of getting rid of things. The challenge is to get rid of seven items one way, which you designate as channel 1, six items in a different way, channel 2, and so on. There are extra lines in a lighter shade of gray for those inevitable moments when you go over in one of the channels.

March 01, 2018

Your main task in clutter-busting is deciding what to let go of, but it makes it easier to know that getting rid of something does not automatically mean throwing it away. When you see something that makes you say, “How could I possibly throw that away?” it helps to remember that you have options. There are multiple ways to throw things away, give them away, or sell them.

This month I will be describing these different approaches as channels. I’ll be featuring 15 channels for the extra stuff that’s lying around your place. With apologies to songwriter Paul Simon, think of them as “15 ways to leave your clutter.” To simplify things, I’ll be presenting each channel right here in the form of a virtual card, about one per day for the first half of March.

More to Read

The Author

Rick Aster looks at resources and markets with an eye to the spiritual forces at work, whether he is describing economic trends to the public or assessing the mood of the public for the largest banks in the United States. This same perspective also helps him in his work in technology and music. His book Fear of Nothing reveals the meaning of clutter and to-do lists.